CNN
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The Republican-led House of Representatives voted Thursday to remove Democrats. Ilhan Omar from the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee.
House Republicans believe Omar should not serve on the committee given her past statements related to Israel, and in some cases members of both parties have criticized her for being anti-Semitic. Democrats have criticized the effort to unseat Omar as amounting to an act of political revenge, and the Minnesota Democrat has held her accountable for past remarks. The party vote was 218 to 211. Republican Congressman. Ohio’s David Joyce voted “present.”
Omar was defiant in his remarks ahead of the vote. “Even if I don’t serve a term on this committee, my leadership and my voice will not diminish. My voice will grow louder and stronger,” she said.
“So whether you vote or not — I’m here to stay, I’m here to speak out against harm around the world and to advocate for a better world,” the congresswoman said.
The move comes after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy formally rejected the Democratic congressman’s seat on the House Intelligence Committee. Eric Swalwell and the panel’s former chairman, Adam Schiff — a decision that was condemned by Democrats.
McCarthy vowed last year that if Republicans win back the House majority, he would strip Schiff, Swalwell and Omar of their committee positions, arguing that Democrats set a “new standard” when they seized a majority by removing Republican representatives. . Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona are from the Violent Speech and Posts Council.
House Republicans, now in the majority, have tasked the Green and Gosar committees with the new Congress.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries on Thursday accused Republicans of “political revenge.”
He defended Democrats’ move in the last Congress to vote down Republican committee mandates, arguing they had incited violence against colleagues.
“When a member of Congress actively threatens violence against a colleague, a line should be drawn,” Jeffries said, adding, “We take threats of violence seriously because we’ve lived through them.”
In 2019, Omar publicly apologized after facing backlash for tweets that drew bipartisan condemnation. The Minnesota Democrat was widely criticized for suggesting that Republican support for Israel was fueled by donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a prominent pro-Israel group.
There were other events: In 2021, a group of Jewish House Democrats accused Omar of equating the United States and Israel with the Taliban and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that the United States has designated a terrorist organization. In response, Omar said she was “in no way equating terrorist organizations with democracies.”
Green and Gosar, who will now serve on the committee, also face criticism from both parties. Last year, Republican leaders in Congress condemned statements made by two lawmakers at a white nationalist conference.
Green was speaking at the America First Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., launched by far-right activist Nick Fuentes as an alternative to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. According to the Huffington Post, Gosar appeared at the America First Political Action Conference via a pre-recorded video. Gosar also attended the same meeting last year.
Green defended her appearance in a lengthy statement, calling the backlash “falsely divisive and hypocritical allegations” and declaring that she would not “cancel” other conservatives even if she found their rhetoric “tasteless, Misleading and sometimes offensive.”
A CNN KFile review of Gosar’s activities and social media posts over the years found that the lawmaker had longstanding ties to white nationalists, pro-Nazi bloggers and figures on the far-right fringe. A spokesman for Gosar declined to comment on specific questions about the congressman’s colleagues in response to the report.
In 2021, after visiting the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, Green apologized for her “offensive” remarks comparing the mask requirement on Capitol Hill to the Holocaust.
Omar, Schiff and Swalwell hit back at McCarthy’s efforts to strip them of their committee seats.
“Kevin McCarthy’s purely partisan move to strip us off the committee is not just a political stunt, but an attack on the integrity of our democracy and a threat to our national security,” Omar said at a recent news conference. Swalwell.
Democrats also pointed to the fact that Republican members of the House are embattled, calling the move hypocritical. George Santos, who faces mounting legal troubles and growing calls to resign for lying about his resume and identity, won two committee seats.
However, Santos abruptly changed course when he told the House Republican conference Tuesday behind closed doors that he wanted to leave two of his committees before his issues were resolved, three members told CNN.
McCarthy has the power to unilaterally prevent Schiff and Swalwell from serving on the House Intelligence Committee because it is a select committee. However, removing Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee would require a full House vote.
McCarthy told CNN on Tuesday night that he has enough votes to remove Omar. It comes after House Republican leaders struggled to lock in votes after several members of the conference voiced opposition to the move.
One of the Republicans, Rep. Victoria Spaatz of Indiana announced Tuesday that she is now ready to support the resolution to remove Omar, citing the addition of “due process language.”
“I thank Speaker McCarthy for his willingness to address legitimate concerns and add due process language to our resolutions. Deliberation and debate are critical to our institution, not a top-down approach,” the congresswoman said in a statement said in.
Spaatz has previously said she opposes efforts to remove three Democratic lawmakers from the committee.
Last week, Spartz released a statement about how Democrats kicked Greene and Gosar off the committee. “Two wrongs are not one right. Speaker Pelosi took unprecedented action in the last Congress to remove a member of Congress. Greene and Gosar were removed from their committees without proper due process. Speaker McCarthy took action in this Congress Unprecedented action, again refusing to assign some committee assignments to minorities without proper due process,” the congresswoman said at the time.
The Democratic-led House of Representatives voted in 2021 to remove Greene from committee mandates over inflammatory and violent statements in the past, including a report by CNN’s KFile that said she had made a speech before being elected to Congress. Has repeatedly expressed support for the execution of prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019. Eleven House Republicans joined Democrats in backing the move at the time.
The Democratic-led House also voted a resolution that year that condemned Gosar and stripped him of his committee duties to condemn the Arizona Republican for posting to social media a Photoshopped anime video showing him Seems to have killed the Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacks on President Joe Biden. Two House Republicans voted with Democrats to pass the resolution at the time.
This story and headline were updated Thursday with more developments.